The pseudo religious nonsense by popular clergy is enough to make an agnostic out of me. Doesn’t matter if it is the “we’re all gonna die if gays get rights” on the right or the “we’re all gonna die if we don’t live green” by the left.

Such tirades always remind me of Mark Twain’s quip: The more they spoke of virtue, the more I checked my wallet”.

It seems that Washington is under a bit of snow, and that is making ordinary folks laugh at those in charge of the cult of global warming.

It might make you wonder when people with multiple degrees in theology try to tell you about scientific matters (what is it with theology and global warming? Didn’t Al Gore study theology once?).

And attention shoppers: The word to use now that you are digging your car out of three feet of snow is: “Global weirding”, not global warming.

Â Interfaith Power and Light is organizing a “National Preach-In” on global warming this weekend. Valentine’s weekend will become a weekend of awareness of the religious imperative to confront “global weirding.”

So listen here, folks, MosesÂ St. Susan is speaking:

I hope some clergy also take a look at Exodus for good texts on “global weirding.” Pharaoh had a hard time believing that change needed to come to Egypt, even though Moses warned him and warned him. God sent ten plagues, and only then did Pharaoh get it (Exodus 7-12), and even then he tried to back out at the last minute. I don’t think God sent these particular plagues, however. Sadly enough, we brought it on ourselves, though there’s a way you could say that was the case for Pharaoh too.

So remember folks, using incandescent light bulbs will make Jehovah mad at you.

The only problem with Susan’s thesis is that she is woefully ignorant of history.

You see, the reason that the Pharaoh didn’t listen to Moses is that similar plagues had happened in Egypt in the past (such as the 4.2 kiloyear ago collapse of the Old Kingdom and a lot of other ancient civilizations), so he figured Moses was a charlatan.

And sorry, I don’t think Jehovah is going to kill Pinoys in mudslides or Haitians in earthquakes to punish Americans who refuse to use “green light bulbs” (or for hitting gay bars on weekends, for that matter).

The Green religion is a cult, and when clergy take it up, it doesn’t make it any less a cult. But it does make a lot of us more sceptical about religion and it’s promoters.

Climate change occurs. The real question is how to adjust to it.

And pollution is bad. The question is how to limit it.

Greed is bad too. Remember that pithy saying “thou shalt not steal”? Try that one first.

In the third world, it’s corruption that kills, not global warming.

Corruption by politicians, who divert tax payer money into useless projects in their districts, while taking a ten percent cut of the funds for personal use.

Corruption by politicians who take money from corporations and unions and NGO’s and then vote to give them contracts, and ignore the percentage of money diverted into personal use.

And if you think it’s bad in the US, you need to see how it works in the “third world”.

One can argue that corruption takes more lives than “global warming”.

Look at the disasters made worse by greed and corruption: the high toll from earthquakes in China and Haiti from shoddy construction, the mudslides in the Philippines from illegal logging, or the flood deaths in Manila because politiciansÂ allowed building residential neighborhoods below sea level.

And it’s not global warming that kills a million people with malaria, it’s the lack of DDT and the problem of counterfeit anti malaria medicines being sold as real medicine.

Nor do you have to go to the third world to see the ecological damage of mountains destroyed by mining, or streams that flow red with sulfur run off from the slagheeps.

Again, that is pollution from greed, and last time I looked, greed was one of the Cardinal sins, along with lust, sloth, gluttony, and pride. Plenty of sins to go around. Lust, not global warming, kills millions from HIV and destroys millions of families, so children grow up in poverty. Sloth contributes to heart disease and contributes to pollution from overuse of personal automobiles.

And if you preach using the traditional ethics, you will actually be doing your job as a preacher, not a political operative.

And please, before you point fingers at ordinary folks just trying to live quiet lives and raise their families, look to your own sins:

we don’t have locusts in Colorado, but we do have the pine beetle destroying our lodgepole pines. When the snow comes off the trees, vast swaths of the once-green mountainsides are brown with dead and dying trees. We do have fish are dying in the polluted streams, and in the seas, though the water has not turned to blood.

Well, maybe the reason that the pine beetle is not being controlled isn’t global warming but other reasons. From Wikipedia:

Spraying is very effective at protecting the pines but is not recommended for large-scale use due to financial and ecological reasons. (italics mine).

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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines.

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